Sunday, February 16, 2014

Stormy Weather

We are probably in deep trouble.Things have been happening.I have noticed this before and kept quiet,
but now everyone can see: many parts of Albion are under water, we are
storm-wrecked and even respectable politicians are speaking about climate
change and how when the dice are loaded it is time to acknowledge that “something is going on.”It has been suggested to
me (by someone I happen to hold in high regard) that if I were to begin
blogging again it might in some way help to forestall the worst-case end-of scenario.So that’s why I’m back here, doing my bit to
save the world.I can’t make any
promises, but we’ll see how things shape up.

Blogging is like sex.I can say this with some authority, having been away from it (the blog,
I mean) for some months.The more you
do, the more you want to, and if you stop doing it you begin to lose the urge to
the point where blog-celibacy becomes the new normal and if there isn’t a
pressing reason to do it then why bother?When I began this lark there was no Facebook or Twitter on which to
fritter one’s time and attention.There
was just this talking into mysterious cyberspace where people may or may not be
looking and listening and there was the sense that one was doing something a
bit weird because one’s friends and familiars didn’t do it and the general
thinking seemed to be that only perverts and very important people did it.Then suddenly everyone did and now if you
send a poem somewhere they automatically assume you have a website.We are all promiscuous now.

I never did come thinking I had anything particular to say –
that was for people who wanted to write essays or the big Novel. But I was
happy to go with the John Cage method of having nothing to say and saying
it.These days I do have things to say,
but I am not saying them because a) there are people who might keel me if I did
and b) I have discovered that it is possible to leave things unexpressed and
still exist with a kind of equanimity.Someone very dear to me, a writer whose name I can’t mention even though
he is dead now because I might be keeled if I did, came to the end of
everything he had to say and stopped writing.It was the beginning of a long, dark, annihilating end for him, and when
I’m on my way out that’s not how I want it to be.I’m still doing poems and working on the
novel, albeit so slowly that no-one would know, but I’m hanging on by the
skin.

I still have M.E. and until they find a cure or a way of
addressing the symptoms, dealing with this is a large part of my life’s work
and there are many days when all I can reasonably expect of myself is
cloud-and-sky-watching from the bed or the adjustable chair in the living
room.It sounds quite nice when set down
like this in black and white, but really it isn’t – not when one wants to be
doing and writing, and also it isn’t necessarily sky-watching as the Normals might
think of it, because one feels very ill.FYI that is what we call those of you who live without chronic illness:
Normals.Makes us sound a bit special,
perhaps, like those in the Harry Potter books who are possessed of magical
abilities, as opposed to the Muggles who are just ordinary.And I suppose we do develop certain
faculties.But we’d trade them in a
breath to be a Muggle sans M.E.

Am I back?For this
moment, it looks that way. And the storms have died down. **

10 comments:

Well, I, for one, am heaving a huge sigh of relief: you have come galloping to the rescue, and only at the nick of time. But those are the best rescues, aren't they? The nick of time ones, so that the viewers/readers have already had a good bit of time to think, all is lost.

Mind you, I think in Real Life, we prefer not to be in those situations in the first place, but life here in blogoslavia is more heightened and artistically rounded – let us say that life here is tweaked and contoured so as to show the artistry of life in a more refined, acute way. Yes verily.

And I, for one, am happy and always have been to be a pervert and a very important person with you – even if it is just plain old promiscuity these days. I am a little bit horrified by the passage of time, however – it is eight years since the start of this different layer of life, for me (and we've been at it for seven. Frightening).

Anyhow – extending my artistically modified and streamlined, tweaked and contoured hand to you, in the hope that in all your life's work, I can remain a place where you can laugh. You know that makes sense, so don't ask me to clarify – I probably couldn't.

I am just awaiting, now, for the big breakthrough in carbon control and ways of reversing the damage…now that you're back.

- and the storms are still abated - which just goes to show. I won't let these superpowers of mine go to my head though. Have we been at it for seven years? But we are not those people any more, and this is a fact - because in seven years everything changes. I look back on us and wave.

Everything does change in seven years, you're absolutely right. It's not for nothing they talk about seven year itch – and I'm kinda itching now to be back into the days of yore when we blabbed and danced our way through all sorts here. I know – nostalgia is for those who are aging. And, well. I am. We both are. We all are, who are at all, and it's preferable to the alternative. However, the dancing and blabbing was nice, in the neige of yesterday. As it is, we can have a quick spin and a snowfight, still, nimble things that we are. Whilst we're twirling, we can always give our old selves a wave, the young things that our old selves were.

I knew all along you would save Albion's white shore – and the rest of the planet and the creatures who have so painstakingly evolved upon it, so I won't feign surprise at the abating of the storms. As you were. Keep up the good work.

x

PS the picture-windows are back. Major hurrah. There's a lovely frond of a palm-like tree in this one, all bathed in sunlight, not only the number. I am surely pampered by the gods of everything, right now.

Signs, I hate to tell you but you are up against 23.68 million Australians who firmly do not want the planet saved. If we can't have it all, no one will. Arrrggghhh. But good luck with that anyway. And welcome back.

Good to see you, Pantalons! What - Australia wants to inherit the earth? I thought China was going to do that. Or was it North Korea? Anyway, we're all pretty much doomed so apparently the best we can do is to have a bloody good time for the next 20 years or so, by which time much of Europe will be a desert, apart from the UK, where everyone is going to want to be (apart from London which will be mostly under water). So come back here, or perhaps we can both go and live in Finland with Anna. If her igloo hasn't melted.

I am going to be working on increasing my carbon footprint. It's the least I can do.

Pantington Bear! How totally delightful to see you after all these itchy years. Hope all things are well with you.

Funnily enough, I spake only last night with an Aussie friend, recently back from said continent, who told with abject horror about your new prime minister (he did mention the name, too, but I promptly forgot it pretty much immediately), who is taking money from prenatal care and buying football teams, shooting prisoners in internment camps – and all before lunch, with four months in the office behind him. He's certainly willing to save the planet, by the looks of things; clearly wanting to save it all for himself (and possibly his cronies).

I think you should return to Europe, Pants. In fact, i believe you and Signs (hello, honey) should both move to Finland. You'll be called Housut and Merkit, respectively, and if my igloo has melted (which is a distinct possibility, given that we've nary any snow left and it's been plus something for over a week now), I will build us a nice laavu or perhaps a kota each, where we can then dwell without the madness of the outside world getting on our tits too much. We'll take wine. It'll be cool.

That kota will do me nicely, Anna. I'm not sure about the names: I thought I was "Kolmio"; and if Pants is "Housut" what are we going to call the other Mr. Trousers Housut when he comes - as he undoubtedly will... ? It's just as well to think these things through beforehand.

Fire Bird, how nice to see you :) Yes, we are living in interesting times. I've been looking in at your house. Difficult times for you, my friend x

You area absolutely right about the Housut dilemma – although Young Master trousers (come back, come back) always spelled his name like bell hooks – lower case (unlike they do in this list of quotes, mind you, although they deffo should not capitalise her name, because, and I quote (wikipedia and her), "She adopted her grandmother's name as a pen name because her grandmother "was known for her snappy and bold tongue, which [she] greatly admired". She put the name in lowercase letters "to distinguish [herself] from her grandmother". She said that her unconventional lowercasing of her name signifies what is most important in her works: the "substance of books, not who I am".). Still, I am mistaken, for Pants should be and used to be known as Pöksyt, in Finnish, alluding to the fact that pants, of course, are underwear – as are pöksyt, although the latter is a bastardisation of the Swedish word byxor.

And you, my dear Merkkejä lukemassa, were Kolmio because you used to look like a triangle, in the days of yore. However, you have since grown a face, and a very nice face it is too – and really, I think I should have named you Merkit (=Signs) in the first place, not allowing your true nature to be hidden behind that triangle (a nice triangle though it was).

So that has solved that problem nicely. You can both move to Finland, no problem, and be known as Pöksyt and Merkit. Sorted.

I'm glad the kota pleased you. I rather expected it would; and I myself am always delighted by the fact that the upper-north people, such as our Sami and the North American Inuit and other Native Americans, let alone the Siberians and so on, are related nations. You can see that in their dwellings as well as their features and lifestyles, and you understand it very well when you turn the globe so that you can view it from above, as it were. These places are actually close to each other. I like thinking about how they've spread around the Arctic region, long before our lot started making a pig's ear of things, necessitating your valiant rescue action.

Besides which, living in a kota would be dead romantic. And poetic. Yes it would, and I'll not hear a word about hardships. Where aren't there hardships? There's air and space and stillness and wilderness over there (not to mention the Northern Lights and the White Nights, the winter and summer, the eye of the sun shutting for months, only to open again to gaze at its children for all spring and summer long), unlike in many other places.

As you can see, I am working hard. For your next trick of planetary rescue and making the world a better place, get trousers to come back, yes?